I don’t know. They are very expensive.
well your suggestion was to take a prescription pill that makes me pass out. that’s not going to help me recover better.
this is what I did earlier in the year, but I didn’t see any improvement. I am too scared to go back to training with only 1 week off and then push back my (potential) recovery even further back.
sounds like none of the members here have experienced something that takes away more than 15% of your strength for long term.
thank you for the suggestion on the lab. I hope I don’t have incurable disease if I do end up having enough courage to get tested.
So, if I’m reading this correctly, based upon everything you’ve said…it appears you will continue to not do a damn thing about your sleep, while simultaneously complaining about it. Got it.
you have misinterpreted what I mean. I said I can’t ‘fix’ my sleeping problem, in another words, to ‘overcome’ it and have perfect 8-10 hr sleep without waking up. I did NOT say sleep problems can’t be improved. It DID improve.
if I didn’t do any of the sleep hygiene stuff, I’m have no doubt that I’d be averaging 4 hours night, instead of 6+2 or something. I even said above I’m already doing a lot of things mentioned in the sleep hygiene article.
yeah I’ll admit, you did spend more money on your bed and multiple sleep studies, and I’m sorry you still aren’t able to overcome your sleeping issues. Now that I know that, I respect your effort to sleep better, and I hope you can sleep better one day. I was just trying to get you to understand that I also put in the effort to sleep better within my budget.
the reason I made assumption that you haven’t struggled with sleep disorder is because I thought if you did, you’d understand that even if you have good sleep hygiene, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee perfect sleep, although it may help make improvements from terrible sleep to suboptimal sleep.
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can this also find sleep problems other than sleep apnea?
I don’t have high body fat or thick neck or anything.
unrelated off-topic
I drink way too much water to go to bed and never go to the bathroom.
I did not know it was even possible if properly hydrated.
I am ALREADY doing a lot for my damn sleep. you are cherry picking my statements. Just because I don’t accept EVERY single advise given to me you just get mad.
the original post was meant to hear about cases of severe overcoming, and all you’re doing is getting mad about how I’m dealing with my sleep.
I was sleeping the same way last year as I’m doing now, and I was much stronger last year.
wait that sounds so counter intuitive…how is that possible?
I’ve read about drinking a lot of water for healthier fascia or something one time and tried experimenting, it made me go to bathroom like 3 times a night. when doing that.
on the other hand, I usually have to go to bathroom once a night with less water before bed.
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what you’re saying makes no sense. you said in the past 8 months, you made MASSIVE improvements with your squat, and that it only went down the past 2 weeks. My assumption is that you took this 1 week off right before the improvement, or at some point during this period. So, it sounds like it did work.
generally speaking, age, significant injury, or major illness can do this. Overtraining absolutely, 100% CANNOT. It won’t happen.
this is just stupid. You probably haven’t read much of my history, but at my best, I was one of the 5 best lightweight strongman competitors in the world. In the year that I achieved that level, I would bet I took a solid 6-8 weeks off, in total, from training. Maybe more. Every single strongman show I do, I don’t lift a damn thing for 7-10 days before competition. The rest IMPROVES my lifting. You’re not going to lose muscle in a week, dude. It doesn’t fucking happen. Hell, after the world championship that year, I took 2 weeks off straight, competed in Texas Strongest man, then took 4 weeks off after. Came back to the gym, won a show a few weeks later.
You’re scared? Fuck being scared. You came in here asking for advice to get better, not what’s going to make you feel secure. You’re talking to people who KNOW the iron game inside and out. If you don’t want to take our advice, cool. Do whatever you want. But I can tell you that just about every guy who comes on here and shits on all the advice he’s given, never gets advice again. This can be a productive conversation, where you learn some things you didn’t know that you can apply to your own training, or you can tell us all that we don’t know you and you know best (even though you clearly don’t).
Being receptive to harsh criticism is a good quality to have, and I hope that you end up seeing that.
Last note:
your lifts suck for 2 weeks and all of a sudden you think you might have ‘an incurable disease’? DUDE. Get your head out of your ass. You sound ridiculous.
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I know that my history was extensive, and easy to misunderstand.
When I said I took a week off and didn’t see any improvement, I meant that my strength was about the same or maybe slightly worse than before I took that week off. After that week off I continued training, I kept on training for 6 weeks, took a deload, and continued doing that for 8 months. The improvement (partial re gain of strength that I have lost, still never close to my old PB) happened very slowly and gradually over that 8 months. Your assumption that I took that 1 week off right before the improvement is not true.
no, it’s not just my lift sucks for 2 weeks and I have an incurable disease. I told you, even 2 weeks or so ago, I still was nowhere near where I was last year. Why are you ignoring that? even 7x215 bench for someone who used to do 9x220 isn’t normal.
I said above that I am considering taking a longer time off. I know I will lose my gains, but I will have to embrace it at this point. However, I have to choose the right time frame. If it is too short of time off, I will lose my gains, but not recover. I want to have a good educated guess on what time frame should be for taking time off. and it’s longer than 1 week. I tried it and it didn’t work.
If you want to continue to only read parts of what I wrote, and using that to say that I’m not accepting your advise, I understand you don’t have time to read through all of it, but you can also choose not to waste time giving ‘advise’ based on reading only parts of what I wrote.
I absolutely love these threads.
My friend, it sounds like you already know what you need/ want the answer to be. Why don’t you just try it and report back how it went? I mean that in all sincerity.
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This seems easily within a “workout to workout” change. The weight is essentially the same, and you got two more reps at it which is no big deal. My overhead press is like this. I’ve gotten 10x135, but sometimes all I got is 7 reps.
I think you need to relax, train in a way that’s fun and not so overly “quantitative” that you’re stressing about performance minutiae. An excellent choice is Walrus-style work as Jim Wendler calls it. Put on a weight vest and crank out push ups, pull ups, and squats. It’ll keep you strong (and get you stronger in new ways) and you won’t be obsessed about the stupid things you seem to be obsessed about.
I know I need more than one week of rest now, but I don’t know if I need 4 weeks or 8 weeks or even more, so that’s why I wanted insights, but no one seem to think I need more than a week off.
yeah it can be, but (last year) when I was in shape to hit 9x220 on a really good day, 7x215 would be on a really bad day. during that time last year, my bad workout I’d hit like 6x220 so it would be about equivalent.
On the other hand, 7x215 this year was also on a really good day. My bad workout during that time I’d only hit 4x215, on average day 5x215. So if you look at the context and compare averages and ranges, it’s a pretty big difference.
Then quit doing that. Just train for fun.
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I think that is where we disagree. 7 x 215 on a good day now vs 9 x 220 on a bad day then is nothing really. It is like a 1RM difference of less than 10%. Heck my max squat last year was close to 400lbs and right now I feel like 330 is crushing me. That has nothing to do with me being over trained. Listen to @flipcollar because the guy really does know what he is talking about. Take a deload, pick a good program with a solid progression model, start light and re build. Just keep doing this consistently over along time and you will get stronger.
that’s what I did for the past 8 months. I was at 9x220 before, and after it went down to 8x200, it took me 8 months to re build my bench from 8x200 to 7x215, and now I’m down to 3x215 again.
If my body was in a normal, healthy state, I don’t think it should take me 8 months to go from 8x200 to 7x215. Our bodies have some muscle memory.
and after 8 months of grind, to go down to 3x215 again, it will again take me another 8 months or so to get back to where I was. I’m going to be circling around the same range like this.
That’s why I’m saying something is wrong with me, and I need to address it differently this time, instead of trying to take only 1 week off again, and then somehow expecting different result…
People just don’t believe me when I say there’s something wrong with me compared to last year. If they don’t believe me, they can just walk away, instead of getting mad.
I’m not training to waste time. I’m training to get better.
If you think I’m wrong about my long-term overtraining, then you can walk away. we can’t all agree.